2020

Think Big

To plan for the future,
consider your systems, context and customers

by Peter Merrill

When I learned
this edition of QP was focusing on the future of quality, I did some online
searches for quotes about "the future." I was surprised by how little I found.

There was the quote widely used by
innovators: "The best way to predict the future is to create it." This quote
has been widely attributed to management expert Peter Drucker—but
I also found an attribution to Abraham Lincoln. It would seem there has been
little new knowledge introduced since his time.

There
also was a quote attributed to Confucius: "Study the past if you would define
the future." Winston Churchill played with these words and said: "Those who do
not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." This is, of course, the basis
for statistical analysis and sparks the great debate separating special cause
from common cause. I love mathematics and its philosophy.

If we
look at past trends, we may be able to predict future direction. However,
complexity makes that increasingly difficult. So predicting the future of
quality in this increasingly complex world won’t be easy.

Defining quality

Having talked about the future, let’s
talk a bit about quality. In my May 2015 column,1
I gave a brief history of quality and acknowledged Stephen Hawking, borrowing
some of his words.

Work in quality and ASQ started with "QC,"
or quality control, although I shudder when I hear the term used today. Being a
disciple of the school of prevention, I see QC as representing checking "after
the fact," which is now known to be immature thinking.

This takes me to one of the tipping points
in the evolution of quality—the work of Philip B. Crosby. His skill was
to simplify what had become a complex discipline. His four absolutes captured
the essence of quality:

Quality is conformance to requirements.

The system for quality is prevention.

The standard for quality is zero defects.

The measure of quality is the price of
nonconformance.

I remember when I taught at the quality
college and explained this on the first morning to a class of nonbelievers.
That was a long time ago, and today, most of Crosby’s absolutes are implicit in
our thinking.

Or are they? In ISO 9000, the definition of
quality is not "conformance to requirements." It used to be "the totality of
features and characteristics of a product and/or service that bear upon its
ability to satisfy stated or implied needs."2 What an appalling
definition, in my opinion.

In 2000, it was simplified to "the degree
to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements."3
The words "of an object" were added in 2015.4 And
yet, throughout ISO 9001, the words "conformance to requirements" are still
used. In ISO 9000:2015, the definition flies in the face of zero defects
thinking.

There is an apocryphal story about Texas
Instruments in the 1980s ordering its first offshore consignment of 1,000
microchips. It decided to be tough on the supplier and demanded a 99%
acceptable quality level. The consignment arrived in a large gray box together
with a small red box and a note. The note said: "The gray box contains your
order and the red box contains the 10 faulty microchips you requested. We are
unsure why you wanted these." You can see why I have a problem with that ISO
9000 definition.

Crosby also succeeded in having people
understand that quality was everybody’s job, not just the job of the quality
department. Quality management emerged through the work of W. Edwards Deming,
Joseph M. Juran and Crosby.

Systems thinking

In the 1990s, systems thinking emerged,
and I recall seeing writer and futurist Alvin Toffler’s keynote at ASQ’s (then
ASQC) Quality Congress when he talked about the knowledge society and this new
concept of systems thinking.

I purchased James Gleick’s
book, Chaos,5
on chaos theory as I continued to try and understand the attributes of systems.
I bought Albert-László Barabási’s book, Linked,6about network theory to further my understanding. I confess, my
understanding of systems did not happen overnight, but I’m glad I took the time
to seek the knowledge.

Today, understanding of systems has been
helped by work done in environmental management and IT. Understanding systems
is essential to understanding quality.

When I teach an ASQ virtual course on cost of
quality, I take the time to explain what Juran called
"the law of 10." Crosby called it the ripple effect, and Gleick
called it the butterfly effect. It’s the idea that a small error at the drawing
board or in capturing customer requirements can cost a company millions if it
gets to litigation. Gleick said, "A butterfly flaps
its wings in Singapore and this leads to a hurricane in the Caribbean."7
It’s all about prevention.

Prevention is applied at the start of
systems activity. That’s why ISO 9001 struggled so long with preventive action
as the last requirement in the standard, while ISO 14001 had prevention of
pollution as its basic principle at the start of the standard. The challenge
for the quality profession is that it has been drawn into dealing with failure
and correction and now must think on a macro level instead of micro level to
truly practice prevention.

Context is everything

There is much excitement around the word
"risk" in the new 9001. For me, far more important is the word "context." I fear
that quality professionals will simply do an internal failure mode and effects
analysis to satisfy the standard, and a less-than-competent auditor will check
the box to say the organization has complied with the requirement.

Context requires not just systems thinking
but ecosystems thinking. Organizations that implement ISO 14001, the
environmental management system standard, have been doing this
the longest. It’s no accident that the new high-level structure of
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) management system
standards emerged from the combination of many different ISO technical
committees—quality, environment, IT and even traffic management. It
captures the best of many worlds.

Context asks you to address the external
forces acting on your organization. This year, I worked with a number of
different organizations on how to implement clause 4 of ISO 9001:2015 on
context. Business leaders love it. It means that if you have lived in a micro
world of correction, you now must move to a macro world of business strategy
and systems thinking. Currency exchange rates, the
labor market and new legislation are prime factors that I have seen affect a
design engineering company, a small manufacturer and a financial services
company, respectively.

We are in a world of rapid change and as
Charles Darwin said, survivors will respond to change. Innovators embrace
change, and that is why it is so easy to integrate innovation into the new ISO
9001 standard. Quality, to succeed, must move from thinking tactically to
thinking about context and strategy.

Think: ‘customer’

Considering the direction in which
quality is moving, it is no surprise that ASQ is
moving into the world of innovation. ASQ’s Innovation Division describes
innovation as "quality for tomorrow." That description recognizes that the
quality profession must work far harder at identifying unmet needs, and those
needs are not necessarily recognized by the customer in regard to the service
or produce that is provided.

These quite different behaviors make it
difficult. But in the world of quality, it’s important to find out from the
customer:

When
did we waste your time?

What
were the biggest hassles?

Which
requirements were not clear?

Where
did you have trouble getting things done?

This should be done immediately, either on
completion of a project or on delivery of an order to identify sources of
customer dissatisfaction.

A
customer satisfaction survey has limited value for the business. Customer
dissatisfaction is much more important knowledge and is found through direct
conversation with the customer. There is a long-established credo in customer
service that for every complaint you hear, there are five you don’t get to hear
about, and the customer will probably download the pain of those five
complaints to someone else—typically your competition.

What
better reason to talk to the customer? That also means quality people speaking
to members of the sales staff, which may be the quality professional’s
challenge, while the salesperson’s challenge may be asking the customer
questions where the answers are discomforting.

In an
August 2015 QP article,8 I explained how
W.L. Gore structured themselves so sales and quality worked together in
self-managed teams. That company has an outstanding reputation for innovation.

This all
means you must ask the customer the problem, not ask them for the answer. It
then means imagining what might be, and this is, of course, innovation.

In my
July 2012 column,9I explained
how the excellence models already had embraced innovation as a necessary
attribute of a quality management system. Delivering quality has become the
price of entry to the market. As quality is mastered, you must be agile and
innovative to respond to the rapidly changing world outside. Address "quality
for tomorrow" and be innovative. In short, context matters—think
strategically, think preventively and think about the customer.

Peter Merrill is president of Quest Management Systems, an innovation consultancy based in
Burlington, Ontario. Merrill is the author of several ASQ Quality Press books,
including Do It Right the Second Time,
second edition (2009), and Innovation Generation (2008). He is a member of ASQ and chair of the ASQ Innovation Division.